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Saturday, January 12, 2013

Celebrating Jeff Bezos

Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos (born January 12,
1964) has played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the customer-centric, risk-taking CEO of
Amazon.com, Inc. Here are some brief quotes that will give you an idea of the
man and his approach to life and business:

“If you
decide that you’re going to do only the things you know are going to work,
you’re going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table.”

“What's
dangerous is not to evolve.”

“There
are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you are good at and
extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work
backwards, even if it requires learning new skills.”

“I
think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only
ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.”

“The
most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal
is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.”

“I believe
you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.”

“I’d
rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.”

“But
there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley
washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our
hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're
in 1908.”

“We are
willing to go down a bunch of dark passageways, and occasionally we find
something that really works.”

“Because,
you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd
be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone.
But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new
thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.”

“The
thing about inventing is you have to be both stubborn and flexible, more or
less simultaneously.”

“A
brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by
trying to do hard things well.”

“We
watch our competitors, learn from them, see the things that they were doing for
customers and copy those things as much as we can.”

“A
company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last.”

“The
framework I found which made the decision incredibly easy was what I called –
which only a nerd would call – a ‘regret minimization framework’. So I wanted
to project myself forward to age 80 and say, ‘Okay, now I’m looking back on my
life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.’”

“There
are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those
that work to charge less. We will be the second.”

“I knew
that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might
regret is not trying.”

Do you
have a favorite Jeff Bezos quote?
Add it in the comments section below.